Our March speaker at our regular Board of Director's meeting will be Rick Loessberg with the Dallas County Trail and Preserve Program.

Dallas County currently has contains twenty-one preserves and 3,366 acres located throughout the County and over 100 miles of hard surface trails. Find more information about the Trail Program here and the Preserve Program here.

All across America, from Cleveland and Buffalo to Portland and Pittsburgh, people from all walks of life—led by the young, diverse, millennial generation—are choosing to live, work, and play in historic neighborhoods. When asked why they moved to these areas, residents often talk about the desire to live somewhere distinctive, to be some place rather than no place. They want things like windows that open, exposed brick, and walkable communities, and continually use words like “charm” and “authenticity” to describe what they are looking for. In short, many Americans today want their homes and workplaces to be unique and distinctive—exactly the kind of distinctiveness, character, and sense of place that historic preservation districts provide.

Indeed, historic preservation districts provide benefits to people, whether or not they actually own a home in them. In New York’s Lower East Side, for example, millions of people visit annually to experience a remarkably intact 19th century tenement neighborhood. In Chicago, the annual Historic Pullman Community house tour is among the most popular residential house tours in Illinois, providing a glimpse into the lives of workers in George Pullman’s planned community. These places and thousands of others—from the Milwaukee Avenue Historic District in Minneapolis, to the Harvard-Belmont Historic District in Seattle—provide more than just housing for current residents. They also serve as living history lessons, and tangible reminders of a city’s past. They connect us across time to those who came before us.

A 111-year-old Oak Cliff landmark long considered endangered can be yours — for the nice price of $575,000.

Now, in a perfect world, it might be listed for a little less. Barbara Reeves, the RE/MAX agent who has just put the mansion on the market, doesn’t hide the obvious: The gem has faded, and needs some $100,000 worth of work to make it whole again. “Scraped and painted” would be a good enough start, she said Thursday. But just a start.

Still, there is no doubt that it’s an estimable piece of property, 4,100 square feet of history planted on W. Jefferson Boulevard directly across the street from Sunset High School. The Victorian farm house, surrounded by far more modest fare, has but one functioning powder room spread among its myriad bedrooms. But it does boast a third-floor ballroom

A piece of Oak Cliff transportation history is set to become a City of Dallas Historic Landmark.

The Mountain Creek Bridge was constructed in 1930 and built to last centuries, although it was only in service for about five years.

A remnant of the bridge, off Jefferson about a quarter mile west of Cockrell Hill, was part of the Texas Interurban Railway, a system of electric passenger trains that moved people all over Texas beginning in the early 1900s. This bridge was part of the line that came through Oak Cliff down Jefferson Boulevard and on to Fort Worth.

In 1930, the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad needed an 8-mile spur to move materials to and from Cement City. But that line needed to cross the interurban line. So the rail road and Dallas County split the cost to build the 45-foot tall, 400-foot long Mountain Creek Bridge. They also excavated to lower Jefferson Boulevard and build the new railway spur between the two, creating a triple underpass. That is all explained in detail in a paper, embedded below, written by Michael Amonett, a landmark commissioner and past president of the Old Oak Cliff Conservation League.

In 1951, Dallas County Commissioner Denver Seale wanted to tear down the bridge because he thought Jefferson Boulevard needed to be widened eventually. Seale told the Dallas Morning News at the time, however, that the bridge would be too expensive to destroy

OOCCL voted unanimously at their November Board meeting to support the preservation and restoration of the exterior of the oldest segment of Rosemont Elementary.

Rosemont was built at the same time as Booker T. Washington High School, Lida Hooe Elementary and Sunset High School.

Booker T, Lida Hooe and Rosemont have identical facades. Rosemont was covered up with panels in the 1970's. The bricks can be seen behind the gutters and an official with the school says the window openings are there as well.

Paula Blackmon from DISD attended the meeting and said now that the bond has passed, discussion of Rosemont's new school will be moving forward and preservation will definitely be part of that discssion.